As president of Combine Music Publishing, Mr. Beckham discovered and nurtured some of Nashville’s greatest songs and writers, and he was a mentor and ringleader who fostered creativity, hilarity and community. He died Monday at TriStar Summit Medical Center in Hermitage. He was 86.

“Beckham was a song man,” said Country Music Hall of Famer Bobby Bare, whose grandson is named after Mr. Beckham. “Everybody loved him, and all the good guys hung with him. He’s responsible for Kris taking off, and responsible for the hellacious catalog that Combine had.”

Chris Gantry, who wrote for Combine, said Mr. Beckham was a vital and atypical member of Nashville’s music community.

“He treated his writers like sons and daughters,” Gantry said. “He wasn’t like a publisher. He was like a dad. He knew how to connect with his writers. He stood behind his writers, no matter what.”

Mr. Beckham was born in Stratford, Okla., and began in show business at an early age, acting in movies as a teen. He became an Army paratrooper when he was 17, near the end of World War II.

He toured as Brenda Lee’s opening act in the 1950s and recorded Top 40 pop hits “Just as Much as Ever” and “Crazy Arms” before coming to Nashville in 1959. In the early 1960s, he worked for The Lowery Music Group and Shelby Singleton Publishing, and then joined Fred Foster’s Combine Music Publishing in 1964, becoming president in 1966 and attracting a stable of hyper-creatives with his sense of humor and devotion to songcraft.

“He was a wonderful character,” Gatlin said. “I could ask his counsel and get a straight, reasoned answer.”

Each weekday afternoon, songwriters from the Combine roster and beyond gathered around Mr. Beckham’s desk and sang new material, attempting to impress Mr. Beckham and each other. He was a central figure among a band of literate song-scribes who were seeking nothing less than to change the language of country music.

“It was Beckham that changed everything,” Kristofferson told author Michael Streissguth. “Beckham was a big, big change. ... I hadn’t worked with a publisher that was so in tune with the music. He was just totally devoted to finding good songs and pitching them.”

Mr. Beckham also mentored industry heavyweights including Woody Bomar and Blake Chancey. In 2008, he was given the first Mentor Award by the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Upon leaving Combine, he founded HoriPro Entertainment in 1990. He retired in 2006.

“In golf, when you come and find your golf ball, you don’t nudge it,” said Gatlin. “You play the ball as you find it, as it lays. You don’t cheat. I believe a man who would cheat you in golf would cheat you in business. Bob Beckham didn’t move his ball. He was great to be around. Total integrity.”

Monday evening, Bare mulled Mr. Beckham’s legacy.

“It’s too bad that good people like that have to go,” Bare said. “There are some people who should be recycled, and Beckham was one of them.”